For centuries board games have been an extremely popular form of entertainment for people of all ages. These types of games have been designed both for a single player and for competition between two or more players. Many games, such as Yahtzee™, mainly involve chance. Many games, such as backgammon, involve a combination of chance and skill, and many games, such as chess, mainly involve skill.
The present invention relates to games of skill that involve a competition between two players to build a desired pattern on the game board while preventing the opposing players from building the desired pattern. Popular games of this genre include Pente, gomoku, renju, and Milton Bradley's™ Score Four™.
Since 1974, the genre of pattern building games has included the very popular game of Connect Four™, a game also published by Milton Bradley™. A much older version of Connect Four™ is known as “The Captain's Mistress”.
Connect Four™ is a two player game in which the players take turns dropping alternating colored discs into a seven column, six row vertically suspended matrix. The object of the game is to connect four singly-colored discs in a row, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, before one's opponent can do likewise. Connect Four™ was created for players age seven and older and has an expected playing time of ten minutes. However, Connect Four™ is limited because only one type of game may be played. Game play starts with an empty matrix, and players alternatively drop a colored disc into the matrix until the desired pattern is realized. Also, only one type of colored disc is used. Consequently, the difficulty and the enjoyment of the game are limited.
A strategic pattern building board game having a vertically suspended matrix that allows games pieces to be both inserted into the matrix and ejected from the matrix during game play is unknown in the prior art. This type of variation will allow a greater variety of games to be played, such as games starting with an empty matrix and games starting with the matrix full of game pieces. Additionally, using game pieces having indicia on the face of the pieces that affect game play is also unknown in the prior art. For example, dropping one of these game pieces into the matrix may allow a player to eject one or more game pieces from the matrix or may allow a player to take another turn.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to create a game that presents a variation in the aforementioned variables because the difficulty and the level of enjoyment of such a game would increase. The invention discussed in connection with the described embodiment addresses these and other deficiencies of the prior art.
The features and advantages of the present invention will be explained in or apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiment considered together with the accompanying drawings.